Smoke & Ashes
by RowanJade
Summary: The sequel to the sequel that hopefully answers some questions for you about Michael's past and all that mystery.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Smoke & Ashes

**Rating: **PG-13 (ish) some mild cussing and the implication of smut.

**Genre:** Spy stuff with a side of adventure, a hint of fluff and a dash of humour because Sam's a funny guy.

**Warnings: **Not really any, this is all made up after "Good Soldier". You might want to read the other two (_Before The Burn_ and _Burned Bridges)_ first to figure out who the heck some of these people are.

**Characters: **Michael, Fiona, Sam and some OCs for flavour.

**Word Count: **19,107

**Author's Note: **Yeah, I'm back. I can't get Mike & Fi and Sam out of my brain. So because of the overwhelming number of people that asked for more of Michael & Ray's story (yes all two of you) I kept it going. Plus I was bored at work and needed something to do. If you haven't read the two prequels yet you might want to before going any further or you won't have a clue what is going on. Or you can just make it up as you go along, whatever, who am I to tell you what to do? Anyway, this picks up immediately after the end of _Burned Bridges_ and goes from there. And hopefully this will answer some of the questions you (two people who read the other ones) asked me to clear up.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Burn Notice or the characters of it, I just imagine that they have more to their backstories than we've been told. I'm not making any money off this so suing me is a waste of everyone's time.

XxXxXxXxXxXx

The heat of the Miami afternoon slammed into Michael Westen as he walked out of the deserted building towards his car. Sam and Fiona were standing in front of it arguing over something, probably him. Fi was waving her arms wildly and stabbing her finger in the air towards the building. He could just imagine her reluctance to leave him alone in there; she didn't like anything that could possibly mean that she wasn't the center of Michael's world. Her possessiveness of him was endearing at times but it had started to get overwhelming recently, but asking her to tone it down would be like asking his mother to stop being a hypochondriac. Sam was gently reassuring her that everything would be fine when Michael walked up to them.

"See? Told you he'd be all right," Sam said with a grin.

Fiona huffed angrily and flipped her hair over her shoulder before leaning against the hood of the Charger and glaring at him. She was obviously waiting for an explanation as to why the man that up until an hour ago had constantly reminded her that he wanted nothing to do with a relationship, now had suddenly had a wife that he hadn't bothered to mention before. Michael smiled at her nervously and dangled the car keys in her face, "Let's go somewhere a little more comfortable. Shall we?"

Sam nodded, always eager to smooth the waters, "Can we get something to drink? I'm dying here."

Fiona was still tapping her foot and glaring so Michael leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, "Relax Fi, I'll explain everything." He did have every intention of explaining things to them both, minus some of the more intimate details of course. Fiona still didn't move so he peered over the tops of his sunglasses with a pleading look, "Please Fi?"

Her face softened a tiny bit, "You will explain everything to me or else Michael."

Michael held his hands up in surrender, "Fine, I promise, now can you get in the car please?"

She did, and as she was climbing in the back seat of the Charger Sam looked across the top of the car at his friend with a nod towards the building and then a look of surprise, "Whoa!" he mouthed at Michael, obviously intending to convey his appreciation of Raina's looks. Michael smiled back and shrugged before getting in the car.

~*~*~

Fiona shot nasty comments to Michael the entire way to the bar that Sam suggested, reminding him about their previous conversations where he'd declared that she was the closest he'd ever gotten to a real relationship. She kept up the spiteful act until her phone rang and she read Campbell's name on the readout. Then she was all sugar and sweetness and it was probably a good thing that she couldn't see both Sam and Michael rolling their eyes and making gagging motions.

They drove along quietly, each lost in their own thoughts for a while, then Sam frowned and glanced over at Michael, "Mikey, where do I know her from?"

"Who?"

"Her, your…whatever she is. I know I know her from somewhere."

Michael looked at his friend in question, "Well, she was in the business too. Maybe you saw her on an op?"

"No," Sam shook his head slowly, "I think I'd remember her if I did. I know I never worked with her but damn it there's something really familiar about her."

"Well, stop thinking about it and it'll come to you."

"Yeah, you're right Mike. It must not have been that important if I can't think of it."

By the time they'd reached the bar, Fiona had calmed down considerably. Perhaps it was because Campbell had asked her out to dinner at a restaurant she'd been dying to try, or because she'd had time to realize that Michael had, in fact, walked away from Raina. Whatever the case, neither of the men with her wanted to rile her back up. As they took a table on the patio under the shade of a strip of palm trees Michael mulled over how to explain to them what had happened in his life before they were a part of it.

They ordered some food and Sam ordered a round of drinks, and they waited until the waitress came back with them before anyone said anything. Fiona was the one to break the silence, "So you're really married?"

"More or less," Michael replied after taking a sip of the ice-cold beer in front of him. "It's not on any books. At least not in this country, so only…" he counted in his head quickly, "four, maybe five, people know about it."

"Does your mother know?" Fiona asked with a smirk as she sipped at her frozen daiquiri.

"God no, and don't you _dare_ tell her! So help me Fi, if you mention a word of this to her, I'll kill you myself." Fiona grinned, baring her teeth at him and he knew that there would most likely be blackmail in his future if he didn't cooperate with her for a while.

Sam rolled his eyes at the woman and wondered what exactly it was that Michael saw in her. "So get to the good stuff Mikey, where did you meet this vision of…mystery?" he had seen the glare from Fiona suddenly shift from Michael to himself so he quickly changed his phrasing to keep her happy.

Michael leaned back in his chair, playing with the label on the bottle of beer, "Met her in Turkey." He smiled as he remembered, "She was pretending to be a student and I was pretending to be a white collar lackey."

"So you didn't know that she was a spook too?" Sam's question had a tinge of amusement to it.

The younger man shook his head and smiled at the waitress who was returning with a plate of quesadillas for them. "Nope. I think both of us were good and fooled. But we were both young and still pretty new to the game so there's that. So, we played our parts and spent some time together and I guess we kinda found something. You know, it was nice pretending to be normal." He took a bite of the quesadilla on his plate and chewed thoughtfully for a minute. "Well, about six months after that, I ran into her again, this time we both figured out what the other one was doing, it was pretty obvious that time, and…uh, one thing led to another and we ended up together." He hadn't sugar coated it, but there was no point in antagonizing Fiona any more than necessary.

Fiona was rolling her eyes as he talked. Apparently the idea of him falling for someone other than her still irked her. "Fi, your eyes are going to roll right out of your head if you don't cool it," Sam joked.

She threw a piece of lettuce at him and turned to Michael, "I can't believe you are the type to buy into that hokey 'love at first sight' crap."

"I didn't say I do, I just said that there was an attraction there." He watched as her face fell a little and she glumly picked at her food. "I think it took us quite a while to realize there was something other than just that whole physical need thing. Anyway, we danced around for a long time and then I realized that she was a part of my life I didn't want to let go of. So I asked her to marry me."

Sam snorted around the bottle of beer he was draining, "What on earth made you think that two spooks could have a marriage?"

Michael looked pensive and chewed his food slowly, then took a long swallow of his beer, "I don't really know. I guess Ray didn't think it would work either because she turned me down." He smiled at the memory and, at his friend's reaction to his statement. "She kept turning me down too, but I guess I finally wore her resolve down. Then we ended up in Fiji for six days when we were crossing job paths and it just sort of happened."

A wistful look crossed Fiona's face for a moment and then she went serious again, "Well I'm sure it was a wonderful marriage, full of white picket fences and whatnot. Anyway, skip ahead to the part where she dies."

Michael glared at her and then went on, "Fine. I got assigned to an op in Afghanistan. I was supposed to be a German gunrunner and when I got there I found out that my contact had been replaced. Unfortunately when I met my new contact it just happened to be Ray." He trusted that their backgrounds would lend them enough information that he didn't need to explain any more than that. "She was supposed to be infiltrating a cell that was possibly linked to Al-Quaida at the time. Anyway, long story short, she was seen talking to me one night, which is a big no-no for Afghani women, and her 'keepers' started digging. They figured out that she wasn't who she said she was and things started to get hot."

He paused again and looked over at Sam. The other man's eyes were wide and full of pain and Michael knew that Sam understood exactly what he was about to say. Sam had spent plenty of time in the Middle East also, and when a covert op's cover was blown, it usually resulted in a very messy, very painful death for the exposed agent. "So I was trying to find a way get us out of there when they grabbed her."

He stopped for a full minute, trying to collect his thoughts and get past the pain that he still felt every time the thought of Ray being captured and tortured came back from the place he'd locked away in. Even though he knew she wasn't dead, it still ached in his soul because that was the moment that he realized that nothing in his life would ever truly be his to keep. "They held her for a few days in some jail they'd put together, I'm sure it wasn't pretty because you could hear the screaming for a mile. Then they trotted her and a couple of others they'd labeled as dissidents and traitors out on this street in the middle of the day and executed them. Mahsood was the one that did it and he took a great deal of pleasure in his methods."

"Jesus Mikey, no wonder you hate the guy."

Michael looked over at Fiona, whose eyes were wide with horror at what he was describing. She'd seen some awful stuff in her time, but the tales that came out of Afghanistan put them all to shame. Even though Fiona had never been to Afghanistan, she did spend some time in the surrounding countries and the atrocities were legendary. Michael swallowed around the lump in his throat and continued, "I guess that because they wouldn't allow women out in public without a burqa on, it was easier for them to hide the fact that it wasn't really Ray they killed, but whoever it was, she looked a damn lot like her."

"So how did she get out of there?" Fiona asked. Her voice was soft and low like she finally understood why Michael never talked about this with her.

"I don't know, she never said. Whatever happened doesn't really matter now. She was listed as KIA and written off about three months later." Now he was at the part that they hadn't been there for, "So somehow she got recruited into this shadow group that seems to be pulling a lot of strings. Turns out, they were the ones that burned me."

Sam burst out laughing, nearly spitting a mouth full of food across the table, "Oh that's classic! Mikey, your own wife burned you."

"Well, it wasn't her specifically, but yeah, she's the one." Michael's eyes crinkled a little in humor at the thought of what he'd been through since he got his notice. If only he'd had some indication as to what they had wanted in the first place, it wouldn't have been such a pain in the ass to get to where he was now. When he glanced over at Fiona she was smothering a giggle in her napkin, "It's not that funny Fi."

"Oh yes it is. The more I hear about her, the more I think I like her."

Michael rolled his eyes at her, "Nice, after you held a gun to her head too. Great first impression there Fi."

"Oh get over it Michael, she's in the business, she understands." She watched his face slide into a scowl, "She didn't even flinch, it's not like I scared her."

Another eye roll and he stopped scowling, "She's been watching you too." He waited for Fiona's eyes to go wide in surprise, "Yup, thinks you're pretty high on the list of demolitions experts out there." A smirk of pride crossed the Irish woman's face, "Yeah, thought you'd like that."

"So she's been keeping an eye on you all this time?" Sam questioned. His implied question was 'Does she know about you and Fiona?' but he certainly didn't want to ask that out loud and upset the tiny Irish woman.

Michael nodded, "Sounded like she's been keeping an eye on all of us. She mentioned that thing with the Jamaican's specifically." The other two people at the table nodded in remembrance of that mess. "And, she also said that Victor wasn't actually one of theirs. Seems he's been a very bad boy recently. He was the one that blew up my place. Anyway, she sent Mahsood to clean up that problem."

"Sounds like Victor is going to be spread a little thin now," Fiona's joke wasn't lost on the men and they all wondered if there were going to be parts of his body washing up on a beach anytime soon.

Sam blanched and tossed his napkin on top of his plate while reaching for his beer, "So what now? Are you back in or is there another option?"

"Well, Ray said that the reason they'd burned me was because they wanted me here. Makes sense if you think about it, there's an awful lot of nasty stuff going through this city and if they've got a local player in place, then he can keep an eye on stuff and get in before they even know they have a problem."

Fiona looked confused, "So… you're just going to accept that? I thought you wanted back in to the g-man club."

"I did. But, now that I know what's behind the burn, well, it's not that bad. I'm still doing what I'm good at, just now I'm going to be taking care of people I can see." He saw the understanding register on Fiona's face, they had talked about how they were satisfied doing jobs in Miami. They were fighting the good fight and that made them both feel better about all of the nasty things in their past.

"I don't know Mikey, sounds like a lousy pay cut to me." Sam had a valid point; the pay that Michael had been taking for the jobs they were working wasn't at all close to what he'd been making for the legitimate covert ops. The people they were helping tended to be poor and their expenses ate up most of what they were actually paid.

Michael shrugged, "Probably so but Ray said Carla would still ask me to do some stuff from time to time. She's paid me before. And paid well if you remember."

"Well, as long as you don't come knocking on my door looking for a place to stay," Fiona said as she got up from the table. "Boys, it's been enlightening but I have a date to get ready for. If you'll excuse me." She leaned over and kissed Michael on the cheek before sliding her sunglasses on and flouncing off.

"And Miami's full time hurricane departs."

"Sam!" The dismay in Michael's voice was offset by the grin he gave his friend.

"Gimme a break Mike, I've seen the wife now. Makes me wonder what you saw in Fiona. There's really no comparison."

Michael's face turned serious and carefully blank, "I saw a lot in Fi. Mostly, I saw someone that was strong enough to go on without me."

Sam seemed to consider that for a minute, "So… you were planning on leaving her when you hooked up with her?"

"In a way, yes." Michael sighed and put his empty bottle on the table. "The thing with Ray taught me that normal isn't ever going to happen for people like us. I found out how much getting close to someone hurts and I really didn't want to repeat that. I still don't ever want to repeat that particular hell. So yeah, I wasn't planning on being with Fi forever."

"I see." Sam nodded and looked serious, then confused, "Why'd you hook up with her in the first place then?"

Michael's smirk could only be termed as rueful, "Have you ever tried to say no to Fiona when she wants something? Plus, she made all the emptiness and the hurt go away."


	2. Chapter 2

The next afternoon Michael was cruising along the highway after dropping Sam off at Veronica's place. Sam had been trying to get back into Veronica's good graces for a while now and he seemed to be succeeding, however, it meant he had to spend more time with her, which he obviously didn't mind. Michael didn't have a destination in mind; he was just letting the flow of traffic sweep him along. Lucy had called him that morning to offer him another job that her company was turning down. She had said it involved some high profile widow of a suspected Mafia hit man and her company didn't want to get it's hands dirty with that particular group. So she'd asked Michael if he'd be interested in taking it and he promised that he'd at least go talk to the woman.

His cell phone ringing in his pocket pulled him back out of the mindless place he'd been and he looked at the display to find a familiar number flashing at him. "Hello?"

"Hey Michael, it's Oleg. How you doing my friend?"

"Good Oleg how goes the rebuild?" When Victor had set a booby trap on Michael's door that exploded and destroyed most of his apartment over Oleg's nightclub the ceiling of the club had become unstable too, so the Russian man was hastily repairing the damages so he could re-open the club and not lose too much in profits.

"Not fast enough for me, but it will get there eventually."

Oleg didn't say anything for a moment after that so Michael asked, "So what can I do for you Oleg?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing Michael, it's what I can do for you. Are you still looking for someplace to live?"

"Well, yeah I guess I am. Why?" Oleg had offered to have his cousin put Michael up in a building he owned but it was in a crime-ridden neighborhood and Michael politely said no.

"Good, well, my accountant tells me that there will be plenty of money left to rebuild the upper part of the building as well. I think I'm going to use some of the space as a storage room but if you are still interested in the apartment up there…"

Michael chuckled at Oleg's hesitance to come out and ask him to come back. Because Michael had cleared out the drug dealer that Oleg had been having problems with for months, the day after he moved in and then kept the club area relatively drug free, it benefited Oleg greatly to have Michael living there. The Russian didn't want to take measures into his own hands and risk being deported so Michael's intervention was a godsend to him. "You know what Oleg, I'd love to have that place again." The other added bonus of living above Oleg's club is that the man never asked him questions. Oleg knew about Michael's former profession so there would never be any reason to lie to the man about something that looked like a bomb or gunshots at three in the morning. Or, worst-case scenario, someone booby-trapping his front door with explosives.

"Good, then I'll tell my people to make it nice for you. I'll let you know when it's ready."

"Thanks a lot Oleg. Talk to you soon," he said with a smile before hanging up.

~*~*~

The job with the Mafia widow turned out to be a wash, apparently she was a raving loon and she was alternating between stories that the government was out to get her and that aliens wanted to make her their slave. Michael had politely told her that he couldn't help her and he had managed to hold his laughter until he was safely in his car. At least he'd have a good story to tell Sam later on. He shook his head in wonder at the fact that having a good story to tell his friend seemed normal now. He'd spent so long in his life only being able to rely on his own wits and abilities that being able to joke around was nearly a foreign concept. These days, he often found himself laughing with Sam or sharing some joke with Fiona. The normal life he'd been avoiding for so long seemed to have crept up on him at some point.

It was kind of nice though, he hadn't realized just how much of an emotional toll covert ops had taken on him. When he'd first found himself dumped in Miami, the only thing that had mattered was finding out who'd burned him so he could get back to work. But now that he'd been taking these jobs here in town, the results he'd gotten were really satisfying. It amazed him to see someone who'd come to him for help, bloody and broken, transform into someone that could hold their head up knowing that they weren't going to suffer any more. He should have realized it on that first job, but the effect hadn't sunk in for a while. Probably when Javier had sent him a letter a few months back with a picture of little David in it that was the point it had registered.

When Michael had first met Javier and his son David, they'd been in a lot of trouble. Javier was being framed for a theft he had nothing to do with and David had been the school punching bag. Michael had given David some tips on how to fight back and the change in the boy was incredible. He'd fought back against the bullies and now was a respected and well-liked part of his school instead of the kid that cowered in the corner. The picture said more than Javier's words could, Michael could see the confidence in the boy's eyes now.

Since then he'd noticed other changes too. Nate had been the biggest surprise, and the most welcome. For years Nate had been a two-bit punk with a gambling problem and no sense. But since Michael had been back in town, Nate seemed to find his way. He'd helped Michael out on a couple of jobs and suddenly figured out where he was headed, so he'd finally changed direction and cleaned himself up. He'd even started his own company and was actually doing pretty well at it. The complete turn around in his little brother made Michael proud, a feeling he had doubted would ever be associated with Nate's name before he came back. Michael didn't think it was anything he personally had done, other than being the person that showed him it could be done. Probably his faith in Nate had done more for the younger man than anything else, especially after their mother's coddling.

As if she could sense when he was thinking about her, his phone rang, displaying the number of his mother's house. "Yeah Ma?"

"Michael, I need your help."

"What is it this time Ma?" Even though she'd stopped calling him every time a light bulb burned out or there was a spider in the bathroom, she was still calling him at all hours for little things that she deemed to be catastrophes. One of her phone calls could be anything from bullets ricocheting around her living room to being out of trash bags.

"The water heater isn't working. Can you come fix it? I don't have the money to be spending on some con artist who will charge me an arm and a leg for something that he won't really repair anyway."

"Sure Ma, I'll come over." Though he would never in a million years admit it to her, he actually was beginning to enjoy spending time with his mother. Probably because of his reintroduction into civilian life, but also because he'd found over the past few months that he actually understood her. Of course, she still frustrated him enough that he thought he would kill her on most days, but he was trying to get along with her. "Look Ma, I'm just coming from a meeting. Let me go change out of this suit and I'll come over okay?"

"All right." He could hear her puffing away at her ever-present cigarette, "Oh and can you stop at the pharmacy on the way over and get my medicine?"


	3. Chapter 3

Michael rolled over on the cement floor next to the water heater and glared at his mother. He'd been at her house for three hours now and she had just now let him get to the heater. She'd met him at the door with a barrage of chores that she could just as easily done herself but for some reason she felt compelled to make him do. Now her gutters were free from pine needles, her sprinkler for the back lawn was placed just right and her spoons numbered one less after he'd pried the one she dropped down the garbage disposal out of the gears. "Ma, there's only so much I can do here. You really need to replace this thing. I mean it's as old as I am!"

"Michael, I can't afford a new heater. You know how much these things cost? And my income is very limited you know. Your father didn't leave much."

People had said over the years that Michael Westen was a stubborn man. They had no clue what stubborn meant as they had never had to try to get his mother to spend money she didn't want to. "Ma, I understand and I would help you out but I've got nothing right now."

Madeline rolled her eyes back at her son, "You really should get a job Michael. I hear that…"

Her words trailed off as his cell phone trilled loudly on the shelf by the door. Michael silently thanked whoever it was on the other end of the call as he got up and snatched the phone away from his mother. He didn't recognize the number but that didn't mean much, "Hello." He shot his mother a look and walked out the back door of the house towards the garage where he could have some privacy.

"Good afternoon, is this Michael Westen?" The voice was a man's, professional and smoothly polished but still cold.

"Well that would depend on who is asking." Most people that were out to kill the ex-spy Michael Westen wouldn't start a conversation with 'good afternoon' but you never could be too careful. He closed the garage door behind him and started rooting through the boxes of tools and other junk in the hopes of finding something to fix his mother's heater with.

The man on the other end didn't hesitate at all, "I'll take that as a yes then. Mr. Westen, my name is Daniel Montgomery and I'm the manager of the Miami-Dade Trust on East Flagler by the bay and it seems that I have some business with you."

Michael had no idea what this man was talking about and he said as much, "Mr. Montgomery I don't have an account there so I'm not sure what kind of business we could have."

"Oh I understand that sir. No, what has happened is that we have something here that belongs to you."

Michael ran through recent memory and couldn't come up with anything that a bank would have that belonged to him. "I'm confused here Mr. Montgomery, I don't know how anything of mine would end up in your bank." It was always better to let your opponent give you information instead of the reverse.

"Well, no you wouldn't then would you? You see sir, what's happened is that during periodic records maintenance we've discovered that one of our safe deposit boxes has been unpaid for. We checked into the owner's status and found that he was deceased. You sir, are listed as the next of kin so the contents of the box are yours."

Now he was really confused. Michael didn't have too many relatives that would ever consider naming him as the next of kin. His mother and Nate were about the only that came to mind that he'd had contact with in years. Even before he'd left for the Army he hadn't been terribly close with relatives. He had several cousins that his mother talked about from time to time but he hadn't seen any of them since he was a kid. "Can you tell me who the box belonged to?"

"Yes, it seems it was your uncle, a Ray Westen. He lists you as nephew and next of kin."

Michael blinked in surprise, he did have an uncle named Ray but he was from his mother's side, not his father's, and his last name certainly wasn't Westen. He scanned his memory for a moment and then remembered something he'd said to Raina the night they'd run into each other again, '_Right, so I'll just call you Ray. I had an uncle named Ray….' _Not wanting to say something he shouldn't in case he was wrong about it being Raina, he simply agreed with the man, "Ah yes, Uncle Ray. I wasn't aware that he had passed."

"Well then you have my condolences for giving such sad news." The man's voice was still rock solid without a hint of emotion. Obviously he delivered bad news on a regular basis so he'd learned not to show any feeling in his speech. He paused just long enough to not sound impatient, "So Mr. Westen, when could you make arrangements to come pick up the contents of the box?"

"Uh, well I don't have a key to it."

"That's quite all right sir, we have this happen quite often and we have a locksmith that comes to open the locks for us. All you'll need is proper identification."

"Huh, well then I guess I'm free tomorrow. When's a good time?"

Montgomery smiled enough that Michael could hear it over the phone, "Whatever is convenient for you sir. Please just ask for me when you come in and I'll be happy to assist you." The eagerness in the man's voice told Michael everything he needed to know about the sincerity of the banker's words. He just wanted the box cleaned out so it could be rented again and he wouldn't lose any money.

"All right, well I'll be in around ten then."

"Wonderful Mr. Westen, I look forward to seeing you then."

Michael flipped the phone closed again and stared at it in wonder. So many questions flew his mind that he totally forgot what he'd been looking for in the box in front of him. If the person who'd left the safe deposit box for him was his actual uncle why did he use the name Westen when his last name was Rosenbaum? Or if it was something that Raina had done, why hadn't she just used her own name? He smiled as he thought about it and realized that if Raina had put the box there for him she really had used her own name since technically her last name was Westen. He shrugged and walked back to the house thinking that he'd find out the answers in the morning, right now he needed to fix that heater before his mother started pestering him again.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning Michael was in the car on the way across town towards the bank when Sam called him. "Yeah Sam what's up?"

"Nothing Mike, just curious about something."

"And what's that?"

"Your wife…was she ever in Bolivia?"

Michael thought about it for a moment, the question itself wasn't odd, Sam had said he thought he knew Ray from somewhere and he obviously had been thinking about it for a while. He searched his memory and tried to remember if she had ever mentioned any trip to Bolivia. She had worked all over the place because her dark skin and hair allowed her to blend in to both Hispanic and Middle Eastern cultures easily. "I don't remember her ever saying anything about Bolivia, no. She did run a job in Belize once though."

"Huh, okay guess it wasn't her then. Thanks Mike. We still on for lunch tomorrow?"

"Sure Sam, see you then."

Michael found the bank easily, although getting to it wasn't easy at all. It was near the waterfront and across the street from a mall so the traffic wasn't pretty. Even after everyone should be at work it was still bumper-to-bumper. He had to park the Charger in the mall parking lot across the street, the bank apparently had no parking of it's own, and he jogged across the busy street to walk into the bank at three minutes past ten. He waited patiently as one of the lesser bankers got Montgomery from his office somewhere in the back of the building. Michael glanced around the large marble dressed room that the cashiers were located in and wondered how much money the manager raked in.

"Ah Mr. Westen, it's a pleasure to meet you in person." Montgomery smiled as he held out his hand to Michael. The banker was pretty much exactly what he'd expected, a middle aged man with some schooling who'd worked his way up through the chain of command by stepping on everyone around him. His slicked back hair and pointed nose sort of reminded Michael of a weasel and he thought that the man probably didn't have a lot of friends. "Right this way please."

They walked past the cashiers and into a doorway that led down a plain hallway towards the vault. At the end of the hall was another doorway with an imposing looking lock on it. Montgomery stopped at the door and pulled out several keys from his pocket, "So Mr. Westen, you brought some identification?"

"Of course," he had gotten his entire set of normal IDs back up to snuff recently so anyone that examined him would think he was just another regular citizen, not a former spy. He pulled out his wallet and handed his driver's license to the banker.

Montgomery took the plastic card to a file cabinet and opened a folder on the top of it. He compared Michael's information with what was listed on the folder and then handed the card back to Michael, "Very good sir, you are the person listed. If you'll just give me a moment to call the locksmith." Michael nodded and the banker left.

He knew he had a few minutes at best and immediately opened the folder on the cabinet to see if there was any indication that Raina was indeed the person who'd put this box in his name. All of the paperwork inside was neatly printed and nothing he could see told him anything about who opened the account, until he noticed the creation date. The date on the form was about six weeks after he and Raina had gotten married. It made perfect sense to him if she were really the one that did this because he hadn't seen his real Uncle Ray in about thirty years and there was no reason the man would leave him anything.

When Montgomery returned to the room Michael tried look bored and asked him, "Mr. Montgomery, is there any indication of how often this box was accessed?"

The banker looked confused but consulted his file, "It appears that it was only accessed once, the day it was opened. There's no record of anyone visiting it other than that."

"I see, and when was it opened?"

"April 14th in 2004. Why would that matter?"

Michael attempted to appear as confused as the banker was, "I'm not sure. I haven't seen my uncle in some time and I was out of the country for several years. What confuses me is why he left the contents to me."

Montgomery nodded as if he were coming to a conclusion, "We actually see this type of thing quite a lot Mr. Westen, Miami being home to a large senior population of course. What often times happens is that people will open a box with some family heirloom or trinket in it and then decide that a much younger relative who has proven to be reliable is named as the next of kin in case something happens to them. Perhaps your uncle thought you to be the most reliable of his kin?"

Thinking about his brother Nate and his mother, it amused him how close to the truth the banker had come without even knowing it. "I guess that must be it."

Any further comment was halted by the appearance of the locksmith in the room. "Mornin' Mr. Montgomery."

The locksmith had obviously been called upon to do this sort of thing before and he wasted no time in getting out a device that would punch out the customer side lock of the box and allow it to be opened with only the manager's key. Michael couldn't help but smile and think that the banker could have saved some money if he'd just let him pick the lock, but that wouldn't go over too well. Eventually the box was open and Montgomery slid the big metal drawer out of it's slot and carried it to a closed room as the locksmith started working on replacing the second lock on the door.

"Please take your time with it. You can just leave the empty box on the table and the staff will take care of it when you're done. I appreciate your timely attention to this Mr. Westen." The banker was obviously dismissing him, probably to go back to his office to see if his bank's income balance was higher yet.

"Of course, thank you for all your help with this Mr. Montgomery."

The banker shook his hand again and closed the door behind him. Michael shook his head in wonder that people like the banker were thought to be considerate and then turned his attention to the metal box in front of him. If he was right, this was the last link to Ray he would ever have, and he really didn't want to open the box and lose that. Sighing he lifted the lid and looked inside.

All that was in the box was a cardboard shoebox and an envelope with his name written in Ray's delicate handwriting. His breath caught for a moment at the sight of it, even though he'd just seen her a few days ago, he'd been thinking of her as dead for so long that it was hard to face something she'd left behind. He ran his finger over the letters on the envelope, wondering what she'd been thinking about as she wrote it. He could imagine her in a hotel room, passing time between jobs and he wondered what had possessed her to do this for him.

He sighed to himself and lifted the box and the letter out of the metal drawer before closing the lid and leaving the bank. He waited until he'd gotten back to the dingy hotel room before opening the items and he settled himself on the lumpy bed with the box in front of him. What on Earth could Ray have put in here?

He opened the envelope first and found a note on hotel stationery in her neat handwriting.

_My darling Mike,_

_If you're reading this then I'm probably dead and have been for a while. I wanted to give you these things to remember me, and all of the good times we had. You touched my life in a way I didn't think was possible and I can't begin to tell you how much that means to me. You have given me so much love and laughter when I didn't think it could ever be in my life, that I will forever be grateful to you. I want you to know that I love you more than anything and I will always love you, too. Hopefully there's a better life waiting for us after this one and we'll meet again. _

_Forever yours, Ray._

He had to read the words over several times because the tears that filled his eyes made the words blurry. He was surprised by the amount of meaning the simple note had for him. Ray had given him something that people in their line of work seldom ever got. The sense of what would be considered as 'normal' that she gave him was the greatest gift he could have ever asked for, especially after his less than perfect childhood. He had spent several months after her 'death' trying to piece his life back together and he had a very hard time with it. Finally, he'd just thrown himself into his work and never looked back, never allowed himself to remember her and the joy she'd given him, and promising himself he'd never let anyone get that close to him again. And now, here was a small piece of what he'd lost sitting in a box in front of him.

He wiped the tears from his face and carefully opened the box. Sitting on the top of the box was a hat that made him laugh. Nothing special about it, other than the day that he'd bought it. They'd been in Fiji, meeting to spend some time between jobs. Ray had been on her way to Panama and he'd been headed for Kazakhstan and they had decided that Fiji was close enough to the middle that it would work. She had arrived in the islands the day before him and she'd booked a room and waited for him. They had played this game before, she pretended to be alone and he would pick her up like he was a random person meeting her for the first time. It amused them and kept their romance fresh.

When he got there he'd found the hotel she'd booked at and watched her for a while to see where she wanted to go. She had wandered around the pool for a while and then walked down to the beach across the sand wearing a bikini that was the most flattering thing he'd ever seen her in covered by a gauzy wrap and a big floppy hat. She looked every bit the tourist, which was part of the plan. He had stood back from the beach in the trees watching her as she carefully set out a large blanket and settled herself on it to wait for him, pretending to just be a sun worshipper on vacation.

He'd purchased some board shorts and the hat on his layover since he didn't have anything beach-like in his current wardrobe and once he'd changed into them from the suit he had been wearing, he too fit the tourist mold. He walked up behind her aimlessly as if he were just out for a stroll and told her that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life. He wasn't lying, even though it would just sound like he was trying to pick her up if anyone was listening. She'd smiled up at him and looked demure so he'd flirted more and eventually she asked him to sit down. So they pretended to be meeting for the first time, laughing and chatting on the beach until the sun went down. Then they went back to the hotel and ate dinner before dancing with other couples and just acting normal. As the evening wound down she asked him if he would stay with her and of course he'd said yes.

Now he held the hat in his hand running his finger along the brim and grinning, reliving all of the wonderful feelings she'd given him and the love that they'd shared. He put the hat aside and reached in to the box to pull out a stack of photos and postcards from various places they'd met over the years, Fiji, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Turkey and lots more. In each picture they were happy, holding hands or hugging each other and looking for all the world like a completely normal couple on vacation. There was even one picture that they'd taken with her parents on a short visit to Cairo that coincided with some time her parents were there. Michael had flown into Cairo to meet her on his way to another job in Russia. Ray had been there for a while; visiting with her parents and behaving like a normal person. What they thought she did for a living was a mystery to him, they'd never mentioned it or questioned his own job, they'd just accepted him as the man their daughter loved.

There were a few other little trinkets in the box, a shell from some beach, a receipt from a particularly wonderful dinner, a bar of soap from a hotel they'd stayed at, just simple reminders of how wonderful the time they'd spent with each other was. There was also another note at the bottom of the box.

_Mike, thought I should leave you something worth some hard currency too. It's not much but it'll buy you some yogurt and a new suit. Love you. R._

Under that was the name of a bank in the Caribbean and an account number. He smiled at the mention of yogurt; Ray was the person who'd gotten him hooked on the stuff in the first place. It amused him that she would even consider leaving him some money; it wasn't like spies ever had a shortage of it, unless of course they got burned. So her generosity was timely and welcome and he tucked the information in his wallet to pursue at a later point. Right now however, he needed to go meet Fiona about a possible job she had lined up.


	5. Chapter 5

The next afternoon found him sitting across from Sam at Carlito's enjoying a Cuban sandwich and a glass of iced tea. "I've been thinking about it some more and I think I know where I saw her before."

Michael looked at his friend in confusion, "What?"

"Your…uh… Ray," Michael had asked both Sam and Fiona not to refer to her as his wife since it wasn't a widely known thing. "Remember I thought I'd seen her somewhere before?" The younger man nodded and stared off into space like his brain had just left on vacation. "So was she ever involved in that whole Iraqi infiltration thing back in '02?"

Sam looked at Michael while the younger man chewed the mouthful of sandwich he had and thought about it, "I don't know really. I didn't meet her until the year after. You think you saw her in that mess?" Sam had still been active in the SEALs during that time but at the tail end of his career with them, in fact that had been one of the last two missions he'd been deployed on.

"I don't know either, but she's got the looks to work in that area," Raina did have a distinct Middle Eastern cast to her features. Michael remembered that her father was of Afghani descent so that would account for it. She had been used heavily in most of those countries because of that but she could also pass for Hispanic or Russian with ease. "I know she did some time in Kuwait but I really don't remember her saying anything about Iraq."

"Huh, well I guess it doesn't really matter. Just one of those nagging brain itch things you know?"

Michael assumed that Sam would drop the question after that but now it nagged at him too. Where would a Navy SEAL and a spy cross paths? The people that did the things Michael had done for his country were usually first in and information gatherers. The SEALs and other special forces teams of the like weren't usually called into a place until after the spies had done their thing, gotten out, and reported back to the people that sent in the military strike forces. Unless the spy was captured they wouldn't have a reason to be in the same place as a strike team at any given time. So where would Sam have seen Raina?

~*~*~

Fiona smiled as she purred into the phone, "So Liam, darling, what's the good word?" She'd gotten a call from Liam, who was one of her former IRA contacts and a good friend, and suddenly her whole day looked brighter. Liam was always good for a laugh, be it around the pub or while blowing open a bank safe.

"Nothing excitin' lass, just in your neck o' the woods. Thought I'd give ye a ring." Liam had left the IRA a few months before Fiona got out and they'd kept in touch. Liam had come to the US and started working for a security company in Los Angeles and had been completely legit for several years now. That wasn't to say he didn't still have his contacts in the less legal parts of the business but he was keeping his nose clean for the most part.

"Oh, what'r ye doin on this coast then?" Fiona winced at her self and the fact that her natural Irish accent that she'd been squelching since her arrival in Miami was coming back after hearing Liam's.

Liam chuckled; he knew she'd been dropping her accent while she tried to blend in more with the locals. "I've some business out here. Some LA big wig is lookin' to buy a beach house and wants 'is security to be tighter than the bleedin' Pope's arse. Won't let a local company do it so 'ere I am. So, how about a pint and some chat?"

"Sounds lovely, I'll come around and collect you."

~*~*~

Fiona grinned and walked into Liam's hug in the hotel lobby. They had agreed to meet at his hotel since it was expensive and private and the person who'd hired him had also given him an expense account. "Aren't you livin' the good life now?"

Liam nodded and held out his arm to escort her to the lounge, "I won't complain about it but it'll never be quite as much fun as back home."

Fiona's smile beamed, "I agree," They had a long history with each other, Liam being one of the IRA members that had taught Fiona how to make explosives from common household items. Together they had found a shared enjoyment of all things deadly. "But, Miami has it's merits too."

"So I hear." Liam found them a table in the corner of the lounge and held out her chair for her. They ordered some drinks and started talking about how their lives had changed and what they missed about Ireland. Liam now had a wife and two children and Fiona envied him for his riches.

Eventually the topic came around to more illegal items and Fiona had a sudden inspiration, "Liam love, let me ask you something. You have access to governmental files correct?"

"Aye, but don't ask me to do anything of a naughty nature now."

"Nooooo, nothing illegal. I just want to find out some information about an…associate."

Liam raised an eyebrow at her, "And what sort of information would ye be wantin'?"

"Just a little history. Seems that Michael had a bit of a past with this woman and I'd like to know a little more about her."

Liam thought it over for a few minutes and then agreed to see what he could find out about Raina and report back.


	6. Chapter 6

It was nearly two weeks later when Liam called Fiona with the information he'd found. She was sitting in a car that was dodging and weaving through traffic as she and Michael tried to escape from the angry drug runners that were chasing them currently. Fiona was calmly reloading a pump action shotgun as she took the call, "Hello?"

Liam said hello and then heard the sound of shells being loaded into a gun chamber, "Is this a bad time love?"

"No Liam, not at all, just some angry little men chasing us, not to worry. What did you find for me?"

The man sighed from his office on the other side of the country, "Not a feckin' thing."

"So everything is legit?" Fiona asked as she put the gun down and reached over to take Michael's gun from him to reload that too.

"That's the mystery lass, there's nothing there."

"What do you mean nothing there?"

"Exactly what it sounds like, there is no history for the name you gave me. No records anywhere."

Fiona glanced over at Michael who's attention was firmly on the road and the car not her, "You're certain? There's nothing anywhere?"

"That's what I'm saying, aye. I went over it three times with a finetooth comb and there is nothing at all on the books for Raina Hesam. You're sure she's really an American?"

"Huh, I'm not sure. Well thank you for your help darling, tell Melissa I said hi and kiss the boys for me will you? I'll talk to you soon." She didn't want to ask any more questions in Michael's presence so she thought it best to just end the call.

"What was that about?" Michael asked as he slid the car around a corner putting more distance between them and their pursuit.

"Oh nothing, just asking after an old friend of ours."

Michael grunted noncommittally and dropped it, he knew that Fiona wasn't telling him the truth by her tone, but there was no point starting an argument with her too, there were enough people shooting at him currently. It would be better to get them out of this mess and then someplace where there were no weapons nearby before he started asking her what she was up to.

~*~*~

"You did what?" Michael's voice was louder than normal and he was trying to keep his temper from exploding.

"I was curious." Fiona tried her best to look helpless but she could see the anger growing in his eyes and his jaw was clenched tightly.

"Why? What on earth would possess you to dig into Raina's past?"

Fiona curled the ends of her hair around her finger as she squirmed on the edge of the chair in his hotel room. "Well don't blow it all out of proportion now. I can't help it if I want to know what kind of woman won your heart. I mean seriously Michael, it's not like I haven't been trying to do the same thing for years now, any hint I could get might help."

Michael blinked in surprise at her statement; he had thought that Fiona had finally accepted that nothing would ever come of their relationship. Especially now that she was dating Campbell. Her admitting that she still cared enough about him to want him back said that either she was revealing a really personal secret or she was lying and trying to throw him off balance. But Fiona was a master of the game and she wouldn't divulge her plan to anyone, not even him, and he knew her better than most people. "Just drop it Fi. What's done is done okay?"

She pouted at him for a moment and then ate another spoonful of yogurt, "Well doesn't make you curious at all? I mean there's nothing there."

Michael thought back to what Sam had said about his feeling that he knew Raina from somewhere and decided to give that feeling a little more attention. Sam wasn't often wrong on gut feelings, except when it came to what football team was going to win. "You think maybe everything was wiped when they terminated her?" He knew that when he was burned, that false information had been put in his government file so if he'd ever tried to do anything that would create problems for them in the future they could use that false information against him. No question about it, the US government owned him now and forever unless he stayed off their radar. If Raina had been declared 'terminated' by the government then they would completely disavow anything related to her. Perhaps they had wiped her existence from their records for plausible deniability?

Fiona pondered that while she licked the last of the yogurt off the plastic spoon she was using, "But why would they do that? Wouldn't her family notice?"

Michael shook his head, "No, they couldn't claim Social Security or anything so they wouldn't have reason to." He reached into the grocery bag on the table and took out another cup of yogurt and a plastic spoon for himself, "And they didn't know about us being married."

"Well, I still think something is wrong with the whole thing."

He glared at her over the top of his yogurt, "Drop it Fi. Please?" She nodded reluctantly and he graced her with a smile but something still nagged at the back of her mind about the issue.

~*~*~*~

Fiona, of course, didn't drop the matter and took her suspicions to Sam. Sam had been the one that had brought his hunch to light in the first place so he should be the one to help her dig. She called him after she left Michael at the hotel for the night and filled him in on the information, or lack thereof, that Liam had given her.

"Does Mike know about this?" Sam asked hesitantly.

"Yes but he's telling me to drop it." She paused for a minute while she chewed her lip and waited to see if Sam would say anything. "Sam, something's wrong about this."

"Well, at least I'm not the only one with that feeling then huh?" Sam nodded even though he knew Fiona couldn't see it, "Let me ask around a little and I'll get back to you okay?"

"Thanks Sam."

~*~*~

Sam didn't sleep well that night; he was running over what little he knew about Michael's wife or whatever she was, in his head until he made himself dizzy. Something didn't add up, no, more like nothing added up in the whole thing. First, there was the undeniable recollection of seeing her somewhere before. He really wouldn't have had reason to have any contact with an operative in his time in Special Forces, and the two spies he had worked with had been insterted with his team. He wracked his brain trying to figure out where he had seen her before and he could come up with nothing.

Veronica found him sitting in the living room with a warm beer in hand, still trying to make the memory come to the surface the next morning. When he explained to her what he was trying to remember, without telling her why, she smiled and told him that he should go see her friend Martin who was a hypnotherapist. Sam scoffed at her suggestion until she told him what the man could do and some of his successes with her and her friends. Sam listened to her and nodded as she talked, some of what she was saying actually sounded like it might work. Besides, he had nothing else to go on and the worst thing that could happen would be that he was right where he was now. So he made a few phone calls to people he knew in various bureaus and asked them to check around before he submitted to Veronica's wishes and allowed her to call her friend.

While she was contacting the therapist he called Fiona and told her what his plan was. "You think he can make you remember?"

"I dunno Fi, but I've got nothing else. I stayed up all night trying to jar something loose and I still can't make it click."

Fiona sighed, "All right. Want me to go along?"

"Sure, why not?"


	7. Chapter 7

"I really appreciate you taking time out of your day for me like this Doc," Sam grinned as he shook Veronica's friend's hand.

"Quite all right Sam, my afternoon was free anyway. So Veronica tells me you're looking to place where you've seen someone? Do you mind if I ask why?"

Sam glanced over at Fiona who was quietly sitting on the chair behind him. "Well it's kind of personal Doc. Um…well you see I was in Special Forces back in the day and I'm pretty sure that I saw this person during one of those operations and I need to find out if I'm right or not. It's hard to explain but you can understand the top secret part right?"

Martin nodded and removed his glasses then chewed on the earpiece of one side, "Of course. I see quite a few service men in my practice and anything you divulge here will be kept in the strictest confidentiality. I'm sure that any information you reveal won't make any sense to me anyway which is why you brought your friend correct?"

Fiona and Sam both nodded at the man, Fiona had seen the wisdom in coming along to pick out the important information from whatever else Sam might say. "That's the plan. Shall we get to it?" Sam was eager to get this over with, the nagging bad feeling that seeing Raina in his past was important was getting more urgent as time passed. Martin escorted them to his more private offices and had Sam lay down on a couch. After Sam was comfortably settled Martin explained the process of hypnosis and got some information from Sam and Fiona about what they were looking for. When he had a good description of Raina he proceeded to hypnotize Sam.

Fiona looked on in wonder, halfway tempted to have the doctor implant some suggestion that would make Sam do whatever she wanted at the drop of a hat, but holding her tongue. Martin had Sam travel backwards in time in his thoughts and begin cataloguing all of the experiences he'd had that may have included seeing Raina. Sam was mumbling as he worked through his memories and Fiona strained to make out anything important. Finally Sam started mumbling something about an extraction operation that Fiona was actually familiar with. She'd had a friend who was dealing arms and explosives to a group in Iran that also had ties to a major guerilla operation in South America. The meeting and sale was set to go down at the edge of a marketplace that was being used for cover. Sam's SEAL team had been sent in to extract the merchandise, which had been stolen from a US depot, but the whole thing had gone south when an assassin started taking out the key players in the operation.

The SEALs had the good sense to scatter and attempt to track the assassin while Fiona's friend had just left, hopping back into his truck and taking his merchandise with him. Sam and his buddy had apparently been the ones that had figured out the sniper was in the minaret spire of a local mosque. They had raced through the crowd and run into the main portion of the mosque looking for some way to get to the tower above. The only person in the mosque was a woman who spun and glared at them upon their entry with their guns held in front of them. They had broken a lot of religious taboos by entering the mosque and the woman was obviously berating them as she waved her arms about defensively and chided them in Farsi. They hastily explained their purpose there and she pointed the way to the minaret where they found nothing but a plain black scarf. Sam's description of the woman matched Raina pretty well so it seemed like that was the memory they were after.

"That should be what we're looking for," Fiona said to the doctor in a low voice. Martin nodded and proceeded to return Sam to his waking state.

"Did I figure it out?" he asked upon his return to consciousness. He shook his head as if he were going to release the memories by movement. "Huh, that was her in the mosque. I knew I'd seen her before."

Fiona just nodded and chewed her thumbnail as Sam thanked the hypnotherapist and said his goodbyes with a promise to get together for dinner soon. When they were safely back in the car Sam questioned Fiona's silence, "You're being mighty quiet there. What's going on in that crazy brain of yours?"

"We've got a big problem Sam."

"Yeah? Why is that Fi?"

She looked at him and he could see the concern in her eyes, "Because I think Raina was the assassin."

"Well now how'd you come up with that?" Sam asked with a look of disbelief on his face.

"Because a woman that was supposed to be in a mosque wouldn't be in the main room."

Sam thought about it for a moment and his eyes went wide. "Oh shit."


	8. Chapter 8

The knock on the hotel room door roused Michael from his sleep. He had been tossing and turning all night on the horrible mattress and had finally fallen into a restless sleep around 3 AM. He glanced at his watch to find that it was past nine in the morning and he wondered how he could have slept that long. Deciding once and for all to get himself a decent bed once Oleg finished with his apartment he rolled off the bed and walked to the door. He peered out into the bright sunlight through a crack in the curtains and saw Sam waving a cup of coffee at the window with a big stupid grin on his face.

Michael opened the door, blinking from the light that assaulted his eyes and found not only Sam but also Fiona standing in the hall outside. Fiona's expression told him that there was something bad about to happen and he stepped backwards to let them into the room. "You two look like you're up to no good."

"Yeah Mike, we need to talk," Sam's voice was tinged with worry, an emotion that Michael had last heard when Sam was upset about ratting him out to the FBI. Sam handed the cup of coffee to Michael and put a bag from a local bakery on the small table while Michael rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes.

Fiona started pacing the far end of the room near the wall, not allowing her eyes to meet Michael's. That caused him more worry than the tone of Sam's voice and the presentation of the coffee and pastries. "Okay, what's gotten into you?" Sam's nervousness and Fiona's pacing told him that whatever the issue was, he wasn't going to like it.

"Well you're probably going to be a little mad at us." Sam sounded like a boy that had just been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. "We kinda did a little more digging into your…Raina's past."

Michael didn't say a word; he was hoping the angry glare he was giving them both would get his point across. Fiona shrugged at him and tried to look innocent but it wasn't enough to get past the flush that was rising rapidly up Michael's neck. "I told you to drop it."

"Michael, we did it for your own good. And you need to know what we found out." Fiona held out a hand to him to try to calm his temper but he spun on his heel and stomped off into the bathroom slamming the door behind him.

Water was running in the bathroom for a few minutes and then Michael re-emerged, his head wet and a towel draped across his shoulders. His expression was relatively blank but Fiona could still see the glint of anger in his eyes. "This better be damned good," he growled.

Sam glanced at Fiona and then started into the words he'd been running through his head the whole way over here. One didn't just casually tell their friend that they suspected their friend's spouse was an assassin. "Mike, it kept bugging me, you know, that feeling that I'd seen her somewhere before. More so when Fiona told me that her friend Liam couldn't find anything on the federal books about Raina. In fact it started bugging me so much that I couldn't sleep. Well Veronica got worried about me and she had me go to a hypnotherapist buddy of hers and we searched my memory for where I'd seen her."

Michael said nothing but the clenched muscles of his jaw had loosened a little. Fiona picked up the story, "I went with him to try to pick up on something with the hypnosis. Sam did remember seeing her." She chewed her lower lip for a moment before plunging on, "Sam saw her in a mosque in Iran where an assassination had just gone down."

Sam elaborated the story, telling Michael all of the details that had been shaken loose by the hypnosis. He also filled in the gaps between what Liam had told Fiona about Raina not having a record to what he'd found out from his own contacts in the government, none of which had been able to turn up any information on the name Raina Hesam either. By the end of it Michael's jaw was open and his eyes wide in disbelief. "You're kidding me about this right?"

"No Michael, we're not. Sam's contacts can't find anything on the books about her either." Fiona sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah, not even Lorraine at the IRS and she swears up and down that they even have records on the Presidents. If they've been alive in this country in the past fifty years, the IRS knows about them."

Michael was shaking his head at the horrible thoughts that were cascading through his brain at the moment. How could it be possible? Raina had told him to check her background with his handler and he…no, he hadn't. He'd trusted her. But, there was the safe deposit box that she opened; she'd need ID for that. Then he remembered that she had opened it in the name of Ray Westen, which as far as he knew, she'd never used formally. Multiple thoughts about the time he'd spent with Raina flashed through his thoughts and it all started clicking into place. And the place they were clicking into was not a good one. He cradled his face in his hands and tried to make sense of it all and found the task daunting.

After a few minutes of attempting to connect all of the bits he knew to be true with what didn't make sense he shook his head like a dog shaking off water and rose from the bed and walked to the table where his laptop sat. He flipped it open and waited for the machine to hum to life and when it did he started searching for clues. Fiona walked over behind him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as he typed away gliding through electronic information that was flashing across the screen of the computer. When she saw what he was looking at she nodded and left the room. A short time later she returned with a padded shoulder case that had another laptop in it. She cleared a space on the edge of the table and glanced over at Michael who was nodding at her as he moved his own computer over to make room for her. They both checked through what government databases they still had access too and cross-referenced dates of confirmed assassinations with the dates Michael could remember when Raina was in a specific place.

Sam decided to get into the act too and quietly asked Michael for any aliases Raina might have used that he knew about. Once Michael had jotted a list of several names down Sam started calling his contacts in various government agencies. Fiona also sent the list of names to Liam in an e-mail and asked him to check those names out too. Sam's contacts all promised to look into the list of names and get back to him and Sam gave them Michael's cell phone number and the number of the hotel room too to expedite the matter. After that Sam felt useless so he volunteered to go get more food and coffee.

"Are you still mad?" Fiona asked after Sam had left.

"Yes." Michael clamped his mouth closed to keep from snapping at her for meddling in his business. Fiona shrunk down a little in her seat and he regretted saying that, "But you were right."

"I'm sorry Michael." She put her hand over his and squeezed a little to let him know that she would support him in whatever happened. "I wish we could have been wrong."

He exhaled sharply and looked over at her, "I wish you had been wrong too. But thank you for being persistent. I just wish… I hope it turns out to be something other than what it looks like."

Fiona mulled over possibilities of what Michael would do if Raina ended up being the very bad person she was beginning to look like. They'd already found three assassinations that happened shortly before a time that Michael knew Raina was in certain parts of the world. Likely if the kept digging they'd find more. Sam returned a little while later with his cell phone pressed to his ear as he juggled the box of food and sodas he'd retrieved. "Great, thanks Lorraine, I owe you big time for this." He flipped the phone closed as he set the box down on the end of the bed, "So I gave Lorraine that list of names and she got a hit on one of them."

"Really? Which one?" Michael got up from his seat and stretched, popping the muscles in his back loudly.

"Uh…what was that Branson one? Raylene?"

"Rayanne. Interesting." Michael plucked a sandwich out of the box and started unwrapping it as he considered what the IRS having a record of one of the aliases that Raina used meant. Especially if that alias was on file with the IRS but what he assumed was her real name, was not. Would the government really wipe her completely off their books? Or did Raina Hesam just not exist in the first place?

"Hey Mike?" Sam's mouth was full of something that had roast beef sticking out of it because it was now all over his lap, "D'you ever check into that bank account she left you?"

Michael had told Sam about the deposit box after he'd gone and collected it. He hadn't thought about the account since he'd stuffed the paper with the number on it in his wallet. He didn't bother to answer Sam, just got up and went to the nightstand where his wallet lay and pulled the slip of paper out of it. Then he walked back to the computer and started typing again. Eventually he had a web page for a bank in St. Thomas up which told him that he couldn't access the account by computer without first confirming his identity. So he called the number it listed for customer service and after fifteen minutes of answering security questions that had obviously been devised by Raina because they were quite personal and something only she'd know. Finally he thanked the person on the other end of the phone and went back to the laptop where he accessed the account information.

"Whoa…that's a lot of zeroes Mikey." Sam commented with a whistle of appreciation for the amount of money in the account. "Looks like she put everything she ever made in there. And then robbed a few banks too."

Michael just stared at the display of the balance in front of him and then re-read the note. _Mike, thought I should leave you something worth some hard currency too. It's not much but it'll buy you some yogurt and a new suit. Love you. R._ "Not much huh? What were you into Ray?"


	9. Chapter 9

Three days later they had found at least sixteen possible connections between Raina and sniper attacks in various databases. Michael had traced the history of the deposits into the Caribbean bank account and found that several of the deposits also coincided with dates of hits. Sam's contacts turned up a lot more information than they had thought would be available but all of it related to one of Raina's aliases. Liam corroborated some of it and the more they found out the easier it was to believe that Raina had actually been an assassin instead of a spy.

But it was Fiona who noticed the pattern in the aliases Raina had been using. She had realized it when she got an e-mail back from Liam one night that had her original list attached to it. He had informed her that he'd found some history with another security company in California under the name Rachel Einar, which was one of the names on the list. She'd called Michael to report to him the news and was sitting at her desk staring at the open e-mail as she talked to him.

"Michael, have you actually looked at these names?" She was flipping to another screen on her computer as she asked the question.

"What do you mean Fi? What names?"

"These aliases you gave me. Have you looked at the pattern in them?

Michael's mouth closing could be heard over the phone, "Well I know she used the standard practice of trying to keep her cover as close to reality as she could. She always used a name that sounded like Ray or Raina. Is that what you're talking about?"

"No, look at the surnames."

Michael scanned the list he'd first jotted down for Sam and couldn't see the pattern Fiona was talking about. "Not sure what you mean Fi."

Fiona cleared her throat as she finished the internet search she'd been running, "Okay, Raina Hesam; Hesam means 'sword' in Afghani. Rayann Branson; Branson is Germanic for 'sword'."

"That's probably just a coincidence."

"Really? How about Rayna Sayf? Sayf is sword in Arabic. Uh…Raella _Espada_. Ria _Habel. _Seeing it now?"

"Shit." Michael had obviously gotten the pattern that Fiona had already seen. "Einar is 'warrior' in Norse, Yadviga is…" he laughed at the joke of this one, "not only warrior but wealthy warrior. No kidding after seeing that bank balance."

Fiona's demeanor instantly changed as she heard the depth of the pain in Michael's voice. If it had been her in this position, finding out something potentially horrible about someone she loved enough to marry, well she'd be in much the same mindset. "So what now?"

Michael was quiet for a while, obviously thinking about his options. He could ignore this information and go about his life like Raina had never existed or he could confront her about it. After that, well it depended on how Raina reacted if he confronted her. "What do you think?"

"What do I think about the situation as a whole or what do I think you should do?"

"What should I do?" the sigh the followed the phrasing told Fiona how much he wanted to keep this debacle to himself but the fact that he was asking for her opinion gave her hope for the future of their relationship.

Fiona thought seriously about the results of any actions Michael might take and finally decided on the one that best suited his personality and the eventual results. "You have to find out. Even if it hurts and she is what we think she is, you have to know." She let him think about that for a minute before continuing. "Especially if you plan on working for this, whatever they are. You need to know what side of the knife they're on."

He sighed again with resignation, "Yeah. Damn it Fi. This sucks."

"Michael, if you ever loved her, and I know you did…do love her," Fiona swallowed around the lump in her throat. "You owe her the benefit of the doubt. She should have the chance to explain this."

Silence roared in her ear for a full minute before Michael said softly, "Thank you Fi."

~*~*~

Michael did everything he could think of to get in touch with either Carla or Raina but apparently Carla was no longer monitoring the building the security card went to. He'd visited the building several times as well as the one on the north side of town that he'd encountered Raina in. And since Carla wouldn't give him a contact number he tried to mail her a letter to the anonymous post office box that was listed on her business card. It was nearly a month before he heard anything from her.

Michael's phone rang in his pocket one evening as he was walking home from his latest trip to the hardware store to jerry rig something he needed for a job. The display indicated it was a blocked number so he had no way of knowing where it was coming from, much less who it was. "Hello?"

"Nice stationery Michael," Carla's husky voice said.

"I don't know, I told Oleg to go with the blue but he likes the pink neon." Michael had written the note to Carla on a piece of Oleg's new stationery that he'd had printed while he was promoting the grand reopening of the club. It was emblazoned with neon pink flamingos and the club's name across the top. It was a subtle way to let Carla know where he was in case she physically came looking for him. The cell phone she'd given him had been destroyed with the apartment so she would have to come find him to respond to his request to talk. Apparently her contacts were much better than his were if she were calling his latest disposable cell phone number.

"What do you want Michael?"

"Gee Carla, no 'how ya been' no 'it's been a while let's have coffee'?" He enjoyed picking on her this way, eventually she'd slip and he'd learn something that would help him figure out exactly who the people in her organization were.

Carla chuckled, "Cute Michael. All right then, it's been a while since I was in town, did that problem of yours get resolved?"

"Oh you mean the one where the psycho tried to blow me up? Yeah, problem solved. Your associate cleaned that up." He listened carefully to see if there was any indication that she would let slip some information about Raina, like what name she was using now but Carla said nothing. "Yeah, so about your associate, I need to get in touch with her."

Carla laughed softly, it would have been a sexy sound if Michael didn't know the pure malice behind it, "Now why would you need to do something foolish like that? I've told you not to dig into something you can't handle."

Michael dodged around several of the younger people standing in line to get into the club and he ducked through the big corrugated metal gate to the relative quiet beyond. He put his bag down on the stairs that led up to his newly finished apartment and walked towards the far corner of the little area, "Let's just say your associate and I had some business in the past and I need to discuss something with her."

"I see, and just which associate would this be?"

That stopped Michael's train of thought; he had no idea what name Raina was going by these days. "Uh the one that was working with Mahsood? I really don't know what name she's going by now."

Carla cleared her throat, "Michael, you have to understand that my organization tends to utilize the services of people that are…well, we're ghosts. As you probably know, we don't use the names we used to be known by. So a description would be helpful."

"Isn't she the one you called when I was telling you about Mahsood?"

"No, I called my supervisor. I have no idea who was sent to deal with the situation."

He suddenly realized this was going to be a lot more difficult than he had first thought it would be. He didn't want to give Carla any more information than he could, mainly to keep his relationship with Raina a secret, but also because it was only fair since that was the way she dealt with him. "Uh…well, she looks Middle Eastern, about 5' 9", I'd call her pretty. Does that mean anything to you? Oh, when I last worked with her she was going by the name Raina."

"Hmmm, I know who you're talking about. Okay, I'll contact her but I can't promise anything. What should I tell her?"

"Oh I don't know." He thought about what he could say that would get Raina to contact him without giving Carla any information. "How about you tell her I need to talk to her about that affair in Fiji? She'll know what it means."

Carla sighed, "Fine, but don't think this means I'll do anything else for you." She said nothing else and hung up.


	10. Chapter 10

Michael didn't expect Raina to call him the next day and he wasn't disappointed. In fact, he waited well over a month to hear from her and he was beginning to give up hope that she ever would contact him. So he was surprised when he was talking to Carla one day, discussing a job that she had recruited him for when she brought the subject up. "I contacted my associate for you, has she gotten in touch with you yet?"

Michael blinked at her over the table they were sitting at, "No."

Carla sipped at her iced tea, "Well, she is a busy person. I'm sure if she feels it's important enough she'll contact you as soon as she can."

"Why the interest Carla? You almost sound human."

She stared at him with her eyes showing no emotion what so ever, like the eyes of a mass murderer with no regrets. The look worried Michael a little, he knew that Carla wasn't a fluffy bunny type of person, but the steely glare he was getting gave him pause about digging further into Carla's past. "I just want to keep the people I work with content. Makes for better business."

Michael couldn't help but laugh at her assessment, "Well thank you Carla. I appreciate your help in the matter."

"Glad to help," she smiled again over her glass, this time in a friendly manner. "So I don't suppose you'd like to do a favor for me in return would you?"

He rolled his eyes and waited for her to make her demands of him. One thing he'd found over the course of dealing with Carla and whoever the people she worked for was that if they wanted an asset of theirs to do something, it was usually best not to argue. So he leered back at her, "Of course, I'd be _delighted_ to help you out."

~*~*~

Michael and Sam were trudging wearily up the stairs to Michael's loft groaning in pain as they went. They'd been on the wrong end of a shipment of explosives that was being smuggled out of the country to a drug cartel in South America. The smugglers were shipping it out on three separate speedboats and the one that Sam and Michael had gotten to before it left the harbor happened to be in their line of fire. The explosion had been rather spectacular but it had also blown them both backwards through a field of debris and now both men were aching and bleeding as they hauled themselves up the stairs to patch themselves up.

"So you think they're gonna try that again?" Sam asked as Michael fumbled in the dark to find his keys.

"Oh, I'm sure they will but probably not from that…" his voice trailed off as he aimed his key for the lock on the door and noticed that there was no need for it. The door was pushed up to the jamb but it was obviously open and there were lights on in the apartment.

Both men silently pulled their guns and crouched down into defensive postures as they pressed themselves against the wall on either side of the door. Michael counted off on his fingers and shoved the door open, launching himself into the open room in a low crouch. Sam followed right behind him ducking to the left and heading for the kitchen. Michael held his hand out as soon as he recognized the figure sitting on the sofa be the back wall of the room. "Whoa, hold up Sam," he called to the other man who was still moving to flank the invader.

Sam stopped short as Michael's order registered and he stood normally but kept his hand on his gun until he realized that it was Raina on the couch. "Don't you people ever knock? No sense of boundaries at all." He obviously didn't give it much more thought than that as he went first to the refrigerator to retrieve a beer and then to the bathroom to grab the heavy-duty first aid kit.

Michael clicked the safety on his gun back on and tossed it on the bed before he made his way towards the 'living room'. "I was wondering if you'd call or not. Didn't expect you to show up here."

Raina looked at him and winced in sympathy as he perched on the arm of the couch next to her and hissed in pain, "You accessed the account, thought you'd want answers." She rose from the sofa and walked across the room to the kitchen where she pulled out two ice trays and started loading his hand towels with ice to reduce the swelling that was bound to occur from the injuries he'd received. She met Sam at the corner of the rug that defined the living space and handed one of the ice packs to him. She ran her eyes over both men and quickly assessed which of their injuries needed the most attention. Then she motioned for Sam to put the kit on the table as she handed the ice pack to Michael and started rooting through the metal box for sutures.

As she carefully stitched up the gash over Sam's eye and then pulled the piece of metal out of Michael's thigh and stitching that up she said nothing, simply allowing Michael to think over all of the questions he had to have been amassing. Once she'd patched both of the men up sufficiently she shut the case back up and returned it to the bathroom. When she came back into the living area of the loft Sam was handing a beer to Michael and holding another one for her. He tilted the bottle at her in question and she smiled before taking it from him. "So, you boys working on that Nicaragua thing?"

Sam nodded at her and Michael sipped at the beer before looking critically at her, "You're keeping track of me?"

Raina shrugged, "I saw Carla earlier. She told me what you were up to." She took a long swallow of the beer, "She told me when I asked for your phone number."

"And you couldn't just call?" Sam was still being defensive of his friend because all too often when someone broke into Michael's apartment it ended up being a nasty thing for him too. Plus, if Raina really was an assassin linked to multiple hits, it might be a good idea to be wary.

Raina raised an eyebrow at him before Michael defended her presence, "Relax. I'd rather get answers from her in person than over the phone." He shot her a reassuring look and then returned his attention to Sam, "Not to be a lousy host but do you mind Sam? I'd kinda like to talk to Raina privately."

Sam raised an eyebrow at the other man but then nodded and rose slowly from the chair he'd been sitting in, "Yeah, I hear ya. So nine o'clock still okay?"

Michael nodded; they had an appointment with another potential client tentatively set for the next morning. They had left their options open on the time because they weren't sure how the explosive smuggling job would go down. "Sure, set it up."

Michael followed Sam out to the door of the apartment where Sam questioned the intelligence of confronting Raina about the possibility of her being an assassin, "You sure this is a good idea Mikey?"

The younger man glanced over his shoulder at the woman who had once been the love of his life, "Yeah, I trust her."

Sam nodded grimly, "Okay but I get to say I told you so if she shoots you."

Michael laughed as he shut the door behind Sam and then returned to the living room where he sat on the chair beside the couch. Raina studied his face for a moment before grinning at him, "Can't figure out what to ask first can you?" When he grinned back she knew she'd read him right. "Okay, let me see if I can read your mind. First of all, let me start by saying it's not as bad as you think it is."

She talked for a long time, telling him about how she had been hired as an operator by the United States government when she was eighteen because of her father's involvement with them. She could blend with multiple cultures so she was ideal for infiltration. She had become an expert marksman early on so they moved her from infiltration to wet works because most of the places they sent her wouldn't suspect a woman of being an assassin. When she surpassed their expectations they sent her on more and more missions involving prejudice affairs and hits.

"So the money in the account is from that. It's not like I needed it, so I stashed it all there and just let it sit. After we got married, things started getting dicey because of an assignment that went bad and the feds started making noise like they were going to terminate me. So I named you as the next of kin on the account in case anything happened to me."

"So you're saying that all that money is blood money from the federal government?"

Raina shrugged and drained the last of the beer from her bottle, "I kinda make Ollie North look like a saint don't I?"

"No, but you're definitely hotter than he is." The joke hung in the air for a few seconds before both of them burst into peals of laughter. They let the tension flow away with the laughter and Michael got up to get two more beers. When he came back he sat on the couch next to her and clinked the neck of his bottle with hers. "Well, here's to getting your worth."

"So?" She looked at him from under a fall of bangs that she seemed to be hiding behind.

Michael leaned back on the couch and crossed his ankles as he stretched out his legs in front of him, "So what? So am I mad at you? Am I shocked? Does any of this make any bloody sense?"

"Yeah, that about covers it." She snorted at the insanity of their situation.

"Ray, I'm not about to try to play like I think it's cool that you were killing people. But I've got no right to judge after all the jobs I had no choice in." He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was fighting off a headache. "Sam and Fiona both think I'm crazy for being caught up in all this and taking it so lightly but they've never been in the trade so they don't get it. I'm not going to say I'm happy about this whole mess, you should know me well enough to know I'm not, but I can't change the past."

Raina nodded and put her beer bottle down on the table next to her, "Thank you Mike. Please understand that none of this makes a bit of difference to how I felt…feel…about you. You made me remember what it was like to be human and I'm never going to let that go. What I'm doing now isn't nearly as bad as the hits but it's still not pretty. Not by a long shot. The group I work for makes their own rules up and usually we get rid of the rules as soon as we establish them. But we do wear the white hats; don't doubt that for a minute. We're doing what the governments and the UN can't or won't do."

Michael thought about her words for a minute and then ran the list of operations he knew about that had been denied by the government even though he knew full well they were the ones behind it and realized what she was saying was truth. These days no government would even consider doing something without hundreds of hours of deliberation and votes and rebuttals and by the time anything ever got decided the problem that started the whole thing was ancient history. It made sense that certain government parties would put together something that all of them could deny but they could also count on to do what needed to be done to ensure certain aspects of democracy.

"Can I ask who's in it?"

She glanced over at him and then stared off into space for a moment, "Most of the usual suspects; US, Europe, Russia. Also a few you wouldn't expect like Nicaragua and Iran. And I never said that and you never heard it."

He nodded at her. After all of the years working as a spy he knew what could and couldn't be repeated. "So where do I come in to this?"

"Right where I told you before. We need private operators that can become parts of problematic communities and run the occasional job for us while keeping tabs on the local goings on. Miami is a hotspot on our radar because of the connection to not only South America but also to Africa and the Middle East. If you had any idea exactly what goes through this city in an average week it'd curl your hair." She could see the look in his face that was telling her to explain that. It was only fair to give him as much information as possible to help him curtail the illegal traffic that the company was trying to put an end to. "Enough to blow this city off the face of the earth several times over. And that's not even considering the drugs. Suffice to say if you're looking for something dirty to invest in, this is the town to do it in. But you already knew that."

"So when Carla calls me up to send me off to put a monkey wrench in someone's plan it's no little thing then?"

Raina shook her head no, "We've got people set up in most of the major traffic cities around the world but it's still not enough. The guns still make it through and the bad guys keep winning. We do what we can, but because we don't legally exist we can't exactly make waves."

He swallowed down the last of his beer and nodded, "Makes sense. Okay then, I'll be a good soldier." He smiled at her and patted her leg to reassure her. Then something else occurred to him, "Were those really your parents in Cairo?"

She burst out in laughter and grinned at him, "No. How'd you guess?"

"Well, they never once asked what I did for a living. You'd think they'd be worried about me being able to support their little girl."

Raina considered the statement and then nodded and shrugged, "Probably right. No they were operatives that were supposed to be my cover. I figured what the hell." She looked at her watch and slowly rose from the sofa, "I should go. Thanks for hearing me out Mike."

"I owed you that much." He rose from his own spot on the couch and reached for her hands. When she hesitated to take them he rolled his eyes and stepped closer to her, sliding his arm around her waist and brushing her hair over her shoulder with his free hand. "I don't bite you know."

She snorted at that statement. He'd told her that time and time again before they'd gotten married and the long-standing joke still amused her. "Funny, that's not how I remember it. I seem to recall quite a lot of biting actually."

Michael smiled at her as he lost himself in the depths of her eyes, "Yeah, but you enjoyed it."

"Mmmm, that I did."

"So what am I supposed to do with all that money Ray?"

She looked up at him and grinned, "Whatever you want. Buy a yogurt processing plant? Hell I don't know, I couldn't figure out what to do with it either, that's why it's there." The grin he gave her warmed her heart and reminded her just how much she loved him. "It's yours now Mike, use it however you want." He caught her completely off guard as he leaned in and captured her lips with his own. Then she completely forgot anything else as her body exploded in bliss.


	11. Chapter 11

When he woke up in the morning he was alone and the sadness set back into his heart as he lay there knowing that he'd never see her again. She'd made that very clear the night before that every time she got near him it endangered her and everything she'd worked for. So he promised to keep his distance and not try to find her again. They'd talked more, before they fell into bed together for one last night and agreed on several things. He promised that he would help out the organization as best he could without stepping on anyone's toes and she promised to put in a good word for him with the people at the top.

He also promised her that he would try to get on with his life. He didn't think that promise would be as easy as the others but time healed all wounds. She had reiterated the fact that she really thought he and Fiona were a good match and he promised to consider it some more. Then she told him the entire truth about her past and her life and he thanked her for that gift.

He rolled over and felt the side of the bed that Ray had been on and realized that it was still slightly warm and a twinge of pain sliced through his heart. Regretting the fact that he'd missed her departure, he pulled the pillow she'd been using towards him and tried to find her scent on it. He did find a spot that smelled like her perfume and he pressed it to his face for a moment trying to memorize that one last piece of her that she'd left behind.

~*~*~*~

Fiona blinked her eyes behind the dark sunglasses that weren't necessary on this gloomy day but allowed her to have something to hide behind as she listened to the reverend's words. His deep baritone voice was soothing and melodic, even given the harsh and painful words it was projecting. She could hear the sounds of people sniffling and one woman flat out crying and it made her feel a little better about the pain that gripped her. She hadn't ever imagined that she would be here, being as sad as she was over his passing, but after all the years they'd spent as friends it was hard to let him go. Veronica was to her left, trying desperately to hold back her tears and failing miserably as she tried to make peace with this ending. She'd had a good long time with Sam and their marriage had been a happy one so saying goodbye to him after all these years wasn't easy. Not for any of them.

Michael slipped his hand over to Fiona and laced his fingers with hers as he listened to the reverend's words and watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. He too was having a hard time coming to terms with Sam's death but he was calmer than Veronica and Fi. Of course spending years as a spy and then as an operative for the collective had hammered home the fact that people of his ilk generally didn't make it to retirement age. But Sam had and soon he'd be there too.

The service ended and people were mingling about, saying words of condolence to Veronica, which wasn't helping her mental well being at all. She looked like she was about to collapse under the grief of it all and Michael wrapped an arm around her shoulder to physically support her in case she did fall. He was murmuring words of encouragement to her when he spotted a face in the crowd that struck a nerve. Something about the young woman was so familiar that it itched at his brain but he couldn't place where he knew her from. She was probably around twenty or so; way to young to have been a friend of Sam's, but strikingly recognizable as someone he knew. The young woman came closer, smiling shyly as she made her way through the crowd towards Veronica.

When her chance came she held out a delicate hand to the older woman who was still leaning heavily on Michael, "I'm so very sorry for your loss."

Veronica sniffled and nodded as if she were completely unsure of who this young woman was. Michael picked up on the question of the girl's identity and reached out his hand towards her. "Thank you for coming. Were you close to Sam?"

She lowered her eyes as if she were embarrassed by the answer she was about to give, "No, but my mother was."

Michael nodded knowingly but then let his curiosity get the best of him, "Forgive me but I'm not sure who your mother is."

"Was, she passed away quite a while ago."

"Oh, I'm very sorry."

The woman smiled quickly and then her face was a blank slate again, "It doesn't matter, anyway my mother asked me to give this to you." She held out a plain white envelope to him and allowed him to take it hesitantly.

He was about to ask another question of her when to his right Veronica started to wobble on her feet. Michael reached over to steady her and to make sure she was okay and when he turned back to the young woman she was gone.

~*~*~

Fiona Westen smiled as she walked down the street towards the dry cleaners. She'd had a good morning and not even the threat of rain in the afternoon could dampen her spirits. Michael had actually managed to book a table at her favorite restaurant and she was looking forward to the evening. He'd promised her months ago that they'd do something special for their anniversary and he hadn't held anything back which thrilled her to no end. She pushed open the door of the shop with her hip as she juggled the pile of Michael's jackets and gave the owner a brilliant smile. "Good morning Sandra! How's that adorable grandbaby of yours?"

"Oh she's getting so big! Let me show you the latest pictures!"

The two women chatted for a moment, cooing over the pictures of the baby and gossiping. Sandra was checking the pockets of the jackets Fiona had handed her as the other woman flipped through the stack of pictures. "Oh, you might need this," she said handing the plain white envelope to Fiona.

"Hmm, must be something of Michael's," she commented as she tucked the envelope into her purse.

"So…is he doing something nice for your anniversary?"

Fiona beamed as she related the plans for the evening to the other woman with a giggle. Twenty minutes later she was out the door an on her way to her hair appointment. She didn't give the envelope any thought until she got home and tossed her purse on the kitchen table. She obviously hadn't zipped it shut because her keys and several other things spilled out, including the envelope. She put the envelope on his dresser and headed back out the door.

~*~*~

Michael juggled his keys and cell phone as he pushed the back door open and looked around the kitchen for Fiona. He hadn't figured she'd be home so he had a little while to do some work and putter around the house. He opened the refrigerator looking for something cold to drink and was happy to find a six-pack of his favorite beer. Taking one out he twisted the cap off and tossed it across the kitchen towards the trashcan. He wandered into the small office they kept at the back of the house and turned on the big computer. While he waited for it to warm up he strolled into the bedroom and kicked off his shoes. Then he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and was about to put it on the dresser when he saw the envelope. It sparked a brief memory and he remembered the day of Sam's funeral and how he'd shoved it in his jacket pocket as he reached for Veronica to keep her from falling.

He pulled the innocuous white envelope off the dresser and turned it over looking for any indication of who it was from. The girl had said that her mother had told her to give it to him but he still had no clue who her mother was. When the handwriting on the front of it registered in his mind with an identity he was almost sad. He hadn't seen Raina's tidy scrawl in years, ever since he'd opened that safe deposit box she'd left for him. But he knew this was her writing without a doubt and suddenly the young woman's statement about her mother came crashing down on him. It couldn't be…could it?

He carefully opened the envelope, trying not to rip it in case this was the last thing he ever received that had been in contact with Raina. Even though he would never admit it to anyone but himself, he still loved her deeply after all these years of being apart. He couldn't imagine what she could have sent him after nearly fifteen years since the last time they'd seen each other.

When he'd finally gotten the envelope open he pulled out the single piece of paper and unfolded it. What he found wasn't at all what he'd expected but it made his heart skip a beat all the same.

He was still sitting on the bed with his mouth hanging open when Fiona came home a little while later. He didn't say anything as he stared down at the piece of paper in his hand and she was worried for a moment until she took it from him and read the information on it. "Did you know about this?"

He shook his head slowly and blinked at her in the dimming light of the day. What amazed him more than what the paper told him was the fact that Fiona didn't say a word. She just sat next to him and slung an arm over his shoulder as she lay her head against his to comfort him. They sat like that for a long time until she read the paper again. "Do you want to find her?"

Michael blinked and seemed to come back to reality, "How can I not Fi?"

Fiona nodded and made up her mind, "Fine, then let's go find your daughter shall we?"

~*~*~*~ Fin ~*~*~*~*


End file.
